


Rule

by AutisticWriter



Series: 100 Prompt Challenge [66]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Death, Gen, Guilt, Prompt Fill, Serial: s041 The Web of Fear, Survivor Guilt, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 22:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11262516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutisticWriter/pseuds/AutisticWriter
Summary: Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart struggles with feelings of guilt and regret after his men are ambushed by the Yeti.[Prompt 66 – Rule]





	Rule

He is the only one left.

After a disastrous attempt to retrieve the Doctor’s TARDIS, Alistair finds himself returning alone. It turns out that the Yeti were a lot stronger than he expected. So much stronger, in fact, that only Alistair makes it back to the base alive.

He feels exhausted as he walks through the building, every muscle in his body aching and his heart still pounding with adrenaline. Yet he somehow also feels numb, spaced out and dazed.

Even seeing the Doctor tinkering with one of those sphere things fails to interest him. All he wants to do is to hide away from everyone, to shrink into the background so no one asks him about what happened. No, what he really wants to do is to turn back time, to stop those poor men getting killed like lambs to the slaughter.

And then the Doctor finds one of those tracking devices in his pocket. Someone must have planted it on him, but that is not Alistair’s first thought. What goes through his mind before anything else is the thought that this is the reason why his men died. Because the Yeti were following him. Like bees around a honey pot, those Yeti followed him and ambushed him... and his men. If only he had spotted the tracker in his pocket, then they wouldn’t have been attacked. They might still be alive.

But they aren’t. They are all dead. Either shot by a Yeti’s gun or captured by the robots, each one of the men in his command died. And he knows he should be used to his by now (he’s a military man; death happens far too often in his line of work), but the guilt still hits him like a knife to the guts.

It still hurts.


End file.
